Oversocialized! The social media meta-cliques pick their new BFFs

Image: The New York Post

Here’s what I think. There are some big time alliances going down in the social media stratosphere right now. People are picking sides.

ReadWriteWeb had that trouble the other day with people thinking they were logging in to Facebook when they got ReadWriteWeb as a Google result for “Facebook login”. ReadWriteWeb, in a post immortalizing their own internet-famous moment, blames Google for this.

But how had this happened? It certainly wasn’t that thousands and thousands of people had just started searching for “facebook login” yesterday. This stream of people has been there all along and something is broken.

Google had completely failed its users. It put us, with a post about how an AOL partnership foreshadowed Facebook becoming the de facto user database, above the most logical search result possible – Facebook’s login page.

While for us this was completely random, other search results show that this is actually a space that is otherwise intentionally occupied by sites trying to siphon off this traffic and profit from it.

But does that sound like an accident? This might seem obvious, but Google controls search results. Google’s taking on Facebook head on with Google Buzz. Steve Reubel thinks Facebook might have a crush on Bing, confirming, in my mind, Google and the One Social Network To Rule Them just aren’t that into each other. I betcha Google pretended to think ReadWriteWeb was cute to capitalize on the usual disgruntled user fumbling during a Facebook UI change rollout.

Huh, that’s an interesting idea. What happens when the business that controls the news has to manage news about their business? I know Google’s not evil and all, but if I was the PR guy over there I’d be hanging out around the search guys, um, quite a bit.

So Google hates Facebook, plays ReadWriteWeb to annoy its users. RWW, while flattered at the attention, knows Google is just using them and makes it clear they will never, ever be their date for the prom.

So who is trying to bff the all-seeing GOOG?

Mashable, that’s who! With a Google Buzz community up and running milliseconds after the birth of this newest social space, Buzz’s success to date has to be buoyed largely by Mashable’s heavy coverage. That’s great; Mashable covers social.

Wait, journalistic integrity thing again…the news reporter is causing the news it’s reporting. I feel like Anderson Cooper just saved a Haitian kid.* (In practice, though, what are they going to do, not use a new social service and not write about it?)

Anyway, whatever, they’re really jazzed up about Buzz over at Mashable. Which would be fine, except Mashable laid a smackdown on it’s 123k+ Facebook fans by inviting them to their Buzzspace & taunting

We’re making Google Buzz a lot more social than our Facebook account and would love your feedback.

Which felt a bit like saying “We’ll be at the cool kid’s party, see ya, losers”. Comment feedback included congratulations to Mashable on their new role as official Google mouthpiece, and a lot of people wondering why Mashable didn’t just be sociable right there on Facebook where their fans were already supporting them and seeking to interact. Mashable’s antisocial diss seems out of place strategically for a brand that lives off social media.

Ok, so that’s all the social power struggle gossip for today. Google used ReadWriteWeb to make Facebook look dumb in front of the class, and Mashable was seen making out with Google Buzz behind the cafeteria. Meanwhile Twitter was busy talking politics and fashion suicides with its older sister’s university friends, and worshipping TED from across the crowded Starbucks. It’s been a crazy week and I am way too oversocialized.

*Please donate to the Red Cross for Haitian Relief, so I don’t feel bad about that Anderson Cooper joke.